


The Cutting Room Floor

by RiYuYami



Series: Pulling Strings [22]
Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Gen, Mind Manipulation, prequel to the series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-24 12:38:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13213932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiYuYami/pseuds/RiYuYami
Summary: Joey had thought that Bendy was getting better about his rebellious nature, he thought his little demon was improving and finally sticking to the script. But a letter to Henry proved that Joey might have to rewrite a few scenes to get things right.Better than just scrapping everything on the cutting room floor.





	The Cutting Room Floor

**Author's Note:**

> Last fanfic of the year for this series, leaving 2017 with something with Joey.
> 
> Time to finally reveal what the hell happened to Bendy that messed up his memories of Henry so badly.
> 
> Sorry for any grammar errors, I didn't bother to really edit this, whoops.

It was rare nowadays for Joey to be absent from his office, but Bendy had gotten a golden opportunity to go snooping around when he found it empty, and the door unlocked. Quietly, Bendy slipped into the room, checking around just in case, before approaching the desk. He knew that Joey had a little book in one of the drawers, it was his address book.

Bendy needed it for the important mission he had, he needed the address of a specific person for the letter he was going to send. The Devil Darlin’ knew that as much as Joey hated him, he still had Henry’s address. Or at least an address that could be of help to Bendy.

Lately, things in the studio have gotten worse, and people have gone missing since Joey began to… well… it was hard to say. One minute he was happy and encouraging his employees, the next he was flipping through his special book, glaring at certain people, as if plotting.

And considering what was happening to Sammy… Bendy had a feeling that Joey was in an experimenting mood.

As much as Bendy would rather keep Henry away, he figured the animator would know what to do to fix this! He knew Joey better than anyone else, right? They use to be childhood friends, until Henry was forced to leave. The Toon didn’t know everything that happened that day, he remembered Henry talking to him, being upset as he packed up things. He wondered if Henry would return if he read this letter, if he was willing to believe the truth that cartoons were alive in the studio, but he was sure the guy would!

Henry was smart, right? He’d figure out that Bendy was real and needed help!

He glanced at the letter in his hand, setting it on the desk as he started to open up drawers, looking for the book. “Now, where is it… I know it’s here somewhere…” He grumbled, tossing out pens and paper. Joey was organized, but that included organized chaos, like these darn drawers!

After what felt like forever for the Toon, he finally found the little book, grinning wide as he pulled it out. He set it down on the desk next to the letter, before grabbing an envelope he had found in his searching. Bendy reached for a pen, about to flip through the book to find the address, when he heard the faint sound of wheels on the wooden floors.

Oh no! Joey was coming!

The demon squeaked and tried to clean up the mess as quickly as he could, but when he saw the shadow of someone through the fogged glass of the door, he bolted. Quickly, Bendy climbed up a bookshelf and pulled open the grate of the air vent in the office. He only just managed to get inside by the time the door opened.

The first thing to catch Joey’s attention was the disaster that was the top of his desk. “What the hell…?” He frowned deeply and slammed the door behind himself, rolling up to the desk. “Who was in here? Uhg, it better not have been Grant again…”

He looked around, confused when he noticed a sheet of paper on the desk, a few smears of ink on it. Where did this come from, it wasn’t part of his desk’s contents. Picking it up, Joey began to read it.

_Dear Henry,_

_You might not believe who is writing this, but I’m gonna let you know that you’re reading the letter of a Toon. I’m your creation, Bendy, and I’m sending this letter because something bad is happening here. Lots of humans here are getting sick or they’re going missing, sometimes both. It’s not good, I think the ink here is doing something to ‘em, or it might be Joey, I can’t tell, it’s all sorts of messed up here! I’m going coo-coo bananas trying to wrap my head around it all! It’s driving me up the wall! Sometimes literally, did you know I can climb up walls? Toon physics are fun._

_Boris and Alice and me are all kinds of worried that people are getting hurt. I’ve gotten hurt, a lot. Toons get hurt, but not like how I do. I don’t recover all that great. Things aren’t going right here, they’re not on script._

_I’m not… on script either. Or on model._

_I think there’s something wrong with me, and Joey might be the reason. He is, actually. He’s going crazy. At least I think he is, Boris says he’s stressed, Alice tells me to stop overthinking. Wally says he’s always been off his rocker, but Wally says that about Sammy too._

_Do you think you can come back? Maybe you can fix things, make things right, perfect again? I liked the studio better when you were here, making my cartoons, drawing me, and not making me wonder if I’ll just end up going back into the ink machine and never coming back out._

_Maybe you can set Joey straight?_

_From your ol’ pal, Bendy the Dancing Demon_

Joey stared at the letter, reading it twice more, before sighing loudly. So, Bendy thought he was going crazy? How terrible, hm, maybe he had been too harsh on the little guy lately. But then again, Joey was always taught by his parents to punish those who misbehaved, as they practiced on him.

Perhaps Bendy was too much like Henry, never truly disciplined, always having to stir up trouble for himself. Shaking his head, clucking his tongue, Joey set down the letter before he went to his bookshelf. He pulled a very particular book off the shelf, one that only he was allowed to touch. “Let’s see… looks like I might have to toy with things again…”

He glanced at the opened air vent, knowing who had opened it. Well, looks like he had some things to set up. It’s going to be a busy day today, uhg, and they have a deadline coming up…

\--

Catching Bendy isn’t an easy task, anyone in the studio could tell you that. But Joey had ways of getting the little demon.

He decided that turning off the machine was too difficult, it might make things harder for him, and Bendy usually wasn’t in the best state when he came out. Joey didn’t want to take the risk of making things worse for his Toon if he did it that way.

So he had Sammy bring him out.

The musician, even with his mental state going down the tube, was still sane enough to fight with Joey about getting Bendy. Yes, yes, he complained and bitched, but he soon gave in when Joey promised to send Thomas down to fix the pipe in his office again. And to give him a bit of a pay raise for his suffering, of course.

It also helped that Sammy was starting to see Bendy in a different light from before, but Joey wasn’t going to dwell on just how Sammy saw the demon.

He patiently waited in his office, working on some paperwork, before he heard the door open. He saw Sammy step inside, holding Bendy in his arms. The demon appeared to be asleep, but considering the damp rag the musician held, Bendy was actually unconscious.

“How did you get him?” Joey asked, setting down his pen.

“Got him in my office, he was looking over something in there. Didn’t even notice me approach.” Sammy replied, dropping the chloroform rag to gently pet Bendy’s face. “He didn’t struggle much.”

Joey raised an eyebrow, hm, maybe he should let Sammy take a few days off, even the director found his behavior to be a little too… bizarre. “Well, bring him to me. He and I have some business to take care of.”

“What are you going to do to him?”

“I’m going to help him with a problem he’s been having, but he needs to be asleep while it happens.” He didn’t actually have to be, but Joey didn’t want to fight the Toon. He knew that Bendy was… well… different from Boris and Alice, for a number of reasons. Obviously, he was made from a different ink, one that Joey had experimented with more than any of the other types of ink in the building.

Bendy was of a special ink, that only existed in two forms; himself and the inkwells that Henry and Joey owned.

It was… a little _too_ special.

It seems that Bendy was developing abilities that Toons did not have, and Joey was both pleased and unsettled by this. He created a living cartoon demon, he didn’t expect him to actually have demonic abilities.

Hm, seems he was a little too good with some of these spells.

However, he hoped that the one he was going to use today would work as well as those spells did.

Sammy looked at Bendy, frowning a little, before shrugging. “Well, whatever, I have an episode to record. I don’t want to disappoint Bendy.” He approached his boss, setting Bendy down gently on his lap. He made a face before turning on his heel, heading out of the office. Joey rolled his eyes before moving out of his office, being careful not to wake up Bendy as he pushed himself down the hall to follow after Sammy. He needed to go down below, to a certain room he kept closed off from the others.

Using a private elevator, Joey made his way down a few floors. He quietly made his way to a room that contained some objects that, well, some people would not be happy to see. Coffins lined the walls, candles were set up around the place. A snap of his fingers and the room was alit with small flames.

On the floor was a large, black pentagram, one that Joey had used many times in the past few years. Carefully, he set Bendy down on the circle, before reaching for the small pocket on the back of his chair, where he held his book and the pen he was going to use.

Bendy remained unconscious on the floor as Joey carefully moved himself out of the chair, sitting down on the floor next to the dancing devil. “I wouldn’t have to do this if you would just behave yourself, if you would stop living in the past.”

He wasn’t exactly a fan of doing this, he didn’t like to rewrite scripts, but Bendy was not following what he had laid out for him. Well, in order to keep things running smoothly around here, Joey was going to have to allow some changes, at least ones he had control over. He’s only changed Bendy’s memories a few times, just little things to keep Bendy from remembering bad incidents, to keep the demon happier and less worried. But this one?

Hmm… he didn’t want Bendy to remember Henry in a positive light, he didn’t want Bendy having this idea that Henry could return and ‘fix’ things. Joey was already finding ways to fix things, they didn’t need that traitor here…

Picking up the book, Joey flipped to the page he bookmarked. It was a page with incantations and certain pentagram designs and symbols for mind manipulation. He was going to have to do more symbols that he had before, he had a lot to change today. Taking up the pen, the director pressed the tip to this finger, hard enough to break the skin.

Blood began to pool from the cut, and he let it collect on the tip of the pen, mixing with the ink. Once that was done, Joey started to make the basic design of the spell on Bendy’s forehead. The demon groaned in his sleep, shifting slightly, before easing up. Joey continued his work quietly as he made the marks and symbols. Once it was finished, he knew he had to do the hard part.

Joey needed to change Bendy’s memories of Henry, but it would be difficult. He didn’t know how much Bendy actually remembered of his former head animator. He knew the Devil Darlin’ retained memories from his drawings that were done in the ‘special’ ink, but he didn’t know what Bendy knew of the day Henry left.

To be on the safe side, Joey was going to have to implant false memories.

He began to read the incantation, before he began to speak of what memories he wanted to change, what he wished to add.

Joey decided that what Bendy possibly witnessed of the fight, if he had seen it, was of Henry being aggressive to Joey, of him saying horrible things about the studio, about the show, and how much he hated Bendy. Just to add a little extra punch, he even had Henry in the false memory say that his greatest regret was creating Bendy.

It was harsh, yes, but it would keep Bendy from contacting Henry, from putting trust in a man who abandoned them. A little part of Joey felt guilt, ruining his old friend like this again, but Henry walked out on him! He could have fought, found a way to stay, could have avoided the draft!

But no, Henry was weak, he gave up so easily…

Joey couldn’t allow weakness, he couldn’t allow such a pathetic fool to return…

He couldn’t… he couldn’t risk being hurt again!

Slamming the book shut, Joey pushed himself out of the circle. He cut his finger again and held his bleeding finger over a candle, letting a drop of blood fall onto the flame. Suddenly the flame grew, as did the others that circled the pentagram, turning a bright red, before glowing black. Brown eyes watched as the marks on Bendy’s forehead burned red before returning to black, slipping into the black of his head, blending with his ink.

Bendy hissed in pain, until the drawing vanished, causing him to relax once more.

Joey sighed and pulled Bendy from the pentagram when the flames returned to normal. He would have to find out if everything was successful after the Toon woke up, but that was fine, he had a feeling that this one worked out well in his favor.

Now, hopefully there would be anymore problems with Bendy about Henry.

END

**Author's Note:**

> Joey, like Bendy, suffers from abandonment issues. The guy doesn’t connect well with people, and Henry was really his only friend. So, yeah, having your best friend leave? Your only friend for that matter? Kinda messes with a guy a bit.  
> Doesn’t help that he was already going off the deep end to begin with, what with a growing interest in occult magic.
> 
> Don’t think for a moment this means what he’s doing is good, oh god no, this is bad, very bad. He’s only making things worse for himself when it comes to Bendy in this series. It’s just another problem he will have to deal with when Bendy starts to become less Devil Darlin’ and more Ink Demon.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
